MAKE MOST OF THE KNOWLEDGE NETWORK, JOIN ACADEMIC RESEARCH FOUNDATION

This paper examines the nexus between tax harmonization and foreign direct investment (FDI) in Nigeria. It reviews key theoretical, empirical and policy issues, as well as the current state of the debate. Utilizing the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration and a dynamic error correction model, the study analyzes annual time series data spanning 1986 to 2024. The empirical findings suggest that tax harmonization promotes FDI by creating a synchronized tax structure, including tax rules, tax base, tax rates, and administration and enforcement practices. Conversely, tax competition discourages private initiative and investment. The paper concludes that institutional reforms are necessary to harmonize and coordinate tax policies to drive FDI in Nigeria.

Keywords: Tax harmonization, FDI, Tax competition, Duplicative tax regime, Institutional reforms.
JEL Classification: F21, F23, H25, 024, P33.

The study examined the short-run and long-run relationship among inflation, money supply, and economic growth in India, covering the period from 1960-61 to 2023-24, using time series econometric models. The sources of data were collected from the Reserve Bank of India and World Bank Indicators. The results showed that GDP, CPI and BMS had upward trend and it implied that these variables were non-stationary during the study periods. The estimated Augmented Dickey-Fuller results showed that all the variables were stationary at their first difference. The co-integration test results revealed that there was an existence of co-integration and it implied that there was a long-run relationship between variables. The estimated results of the Vector Error Correction Model showed that that the past values of D (GDP (-1)) and D (CPI (-3)) had a significant negative effect on GDP. A negative effect of past values of GDP on GDP may be due to previous year GDP income had not been properly reinvested into the Indian economy. In the GDP equation, the coefficient of the error correction term had an appropriate negative sign with highly significant, indicating that about 4.37 per cent of the disequilibrium was corrected within the next period’s change in GDP. The estimated adjusted R2 value implied that 37.8 per cent of the variation in GDP explained by money BMS and CPI. The variance decomposition showed that the money supply contributed more to Indian economic growth than inflation. The Granger-causality test results indicated that a unidirectional causation between CPI and GDP, and between CPI and BMS. The findings highlighted the importance of inflation management, and it had less influenced on economic growth. The study believed that findings will be useful to the policymakers for developing effective economic strategies.

Keywords: Economic growth, Inflation Money supply, Cointegration, VECM, India
JEL Classifications: E31, E50, F43.

This study was inspired by Nigerian Deposit Money institutions’ persistent poor performance, which in turn affects the return on investment available to capital providers. It concentrated on debt financing and return on investment for businesses that transfer money from economic sectors with surpluses to those with deficits. The study looks at how the return on assets of Nigerian listed deposit money banks is affected by both total debt to total assets and long-term debt to total assets. The audited financial accounts of eleven (11) of the fourteen (14) DMBs that make up the study population over a ten-year period (2014–2023) provided secondary data for the study. The Trade-Off Theory serves as the foundation for the study, which used a correlational research approach. The panel data utilized in the study was analyzed using STATA 14 and several regression models were applied. The 110 observations’ results from the Random Effect Regression model were examined. The results showed that whereas long-term debt to total assets (LTDTA) has a considerable and positive impact on ROA, total debt to total assets (TDTA) has a negative but significant impact. The study’s findings showed that debt financing has a 26% impact on the ROA of listed DMBs in Nigeria, with long-term debt accounting for the remaining 74% of the influence. The study recommends that DMBs should use debt more sparingly in order to prevent debt traps that could jeopardize their ability to continue operating in the event of default.

Keywords: Debt finance, long-term debt, returns on assets, total debt to total assets, trade-off theory.

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on stock market returns in five selected African countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Mauritius is examined. With monthly data from 2017 to 2023, a bi-variate analysis within the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) framework is employed to examine the short- and long-run dynamics. Significant variations in the pandemic’s effects across the sample countries are revealed. There was significant positive long-run impact in the case of Nigeria and Mauritius, but negative in the case of South Africa, while Kenya and Ghana showed no significant long-run effects. There were mixed short-run impacts, with immediate effects in some countries and delayed responses in others. Generally, the pandemic negatively influenced stock market returns across African countries, due to heightened financial asset risks and increased economic policy uncertainty. The outcome of the study underscores the need for enhanced stock market resilience by balancing short- and long-term instruments, ensuring early warning mechanisms, and internalizing financial system regulation. Efforts to strengthen Africa’s financial systems, as well as adopting tailored policy responses can mitigate the adverse effects of shocks and ensure market stability.

Keywords: Covid-19, Economic policy, Stock market returns, Asset risks, market capitalisation.
JEL Classification: G15, G01, E44, I15.